Trump forces lagged Clinton in August money race

Even as Donald Trump and his allies ramped up their fundraising and political infrastructure in August, their combined monthly fundraising haul lagged $42 million behind that of Hillary Clinton’s forces, according to a POLITICO analysis of reports filed Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission.

The Trump campaign, two supportive super PACs and the Republican National Committee pulled in a combined $70 million, relying largely on small donors, during the tumultuous month of August, when his campaign shook up its leadership in an attempt to reboot after a chaotic nominating convention in July.

Story Continued Below

By contrast, the Clinton campaign, an allied super PAC and the Democratic National Committee, leaning heavily on major donors, raised a total of $112 million in August, as her campaign rode a strong bounce from its tightly choreographed, star-studded convention.

Trump’s forces entered September with almost $96 million in the bank, while Clinton’s started the month with $121.4 million, according to Politico’s analysis.

The analysis does not include fundraising tallies for the joint fundraising committees the rival candidates created with their respective parties, nor does it include the fundraising hauls from some supportive super PACs. All of those committees disclose their finances on a quarterly basis, meaning they won’t be required to file detailed financial reports until Oct. 15.

But the analysis provides revealing hints about the contrasting strategies employed by the presidential candidates and their allies.

The joint fundraising committee that Trump created with the RNC appears to be sitting on a significant sum of cash — perhaps as much as $47 million at the end of last month — while distributing only $12 million to the RNC itself and $20 million to Trump’s campaign. That transfer to Trump accounted for nearly half his August total — the first time he’s received such a large portion of his cash that way.

Clinton, on the other hand, received $31.4 million from her own joint fundraising vehicle, and the Democratic National Committee received $12 million. An additional $12 million appear to have gone to state parties but been rerouted to the DNC, repeating a pattern from previous months. (The DNC also transferred out some $14 million to various state parties in August.)

Trump’s campaign, which had largely eschewed spending on the trappings of political tactics, showed early signs of implementing a more conventional operation under its new leadership.

It spent serious money — $5.3 million — on paid media in August, most of which went through Rick Reed Media, though $718,000 went through Jamestown Associates, the firm of his then-new senior communications adviser Jason Miller. That was dwarfed by the $32.7 million that Clinton paid her media buyer, GMMB, in August.

Trump spent almost $1 million on field consultants, up from $432,000 in July. And his campaign’s staff grew to 140 people, with a total payroll of $643,000, up from $392,000 for 84 people in July. But that still trailed Clinton’s 789-person, $3.3 million payroll. Trump more than doubled his spending on field consulting in August to $973,000.

The campaign also paid for polling, something it had been reluctant to do, directing $128,500 to the firm of Kellyanne Conway, who took over as campaign manager late in the month. And it spent $250,000 on data services provided by Cambridge Analytica, a firm owned largely by the influential Mercer family, which played a pivotal role in Trump’s campaign shakeup and is spearheading one of the super PACs backing the campaign.

Still, the campaign continued devoting serious cash to bankroll the former reality TV star’s traveling show: $2 million went for rally-related expenses including facility rentals, audio-visual services, and event staging and consulting. Then, of course, there was the spending on Trump branding, which included $420,00 on hats and $1.7 million on T-shirts and other merchandise.

And the campaign spent $547,000 on services provided by Trump’s own companies, including $170,000 for rent at Trump Tower and $319,000 on TAG Air Inc.

By contrast, Trump spent only $80,000 on strategy consulting, with the firm of fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski receiving $20,000 of that.

And the campaign’s largest expense continued to be online advertising and fundraising payments to the Austin-based digital firm of Trump’s digital director Brad Parscale, who is running the campaign’s online fundraising and advertising efforts, despite having no prior political experience. His firm reaped $11.1 million in August — up nearly $3 million from July and good for a third of all the campaign’s spending.

Although the online fundraising effort overseen by Parscale helped produce an impressive small-dollar haul in which 65 percent of the campaign’s contributions came in amounts of less than $200, the payments to Giles-Parscale suggest the campaign has spent heavily on list rentals, email solicitations and online advertising to round up those small contributions.

The percentage of cash that Clinton raised from small donors was half of Trump’s. About 31 percent of her cash came in checks of less than $200, which actually marked a slight improvement over her average across the cycle. Clinton and running mate Tim Kaine focused in August on big-dollar fundraisers in exclusive summer destinations.

Likewise, the main super PAC supporting Clinton, Priorities USA, drew more than half of its $23.4 million August haul from its top five donors: Slim-Fast founder Daniel Abraham and Newsweb chairman Fred Eychaner ($3 million each), billionaire financier George Soros ($2.5 million), investor Donald Sussman and Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective (both with $2 million).

Trump received some good news this week about the fundraising of his own high-dollar super PACs. Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who had been sitting out the cycle so far, and his wife, Miriam, reportedly committed $5 million to a pro-Trump super PAC effort, but the group to which he has pledged the cash hasn’t launched the effort and it won’t disclose its finances until next month.

The other super PACs supporting Trump have continued to lag in fundraising.

Make America Number 1, the pro-Trump super PAC run by the Mercer family, received $1 million from Cherna Moskowitz, a Miami philanthropist, and $50,000 from Erik Prince, who founded the defense contractor Blackwater. But it didn’t receive any other big checks and didn’t get a dime in August from the Mercer family, which had donated $2 million to the PAC in July.

Another pro-Trump super PAC, Great America PAC, appears to have the campaign’s blessing after Eric Trump, the candidate’s son, attended one of its events. But it raised only $3.6 million in August, including $250,000 from RHS Investments, a Texas company that appears to be tied to banking executive Robert H. Seale, and $200,000 from Martin Harmon of Rocklin, Calif.

The Committee to Restore America’s Greatness and Rebuilding America Now — other pro-Trump super PACs — won’t disclose their financials until next month because they report on a quarterly cycle. The same goes for pro-Clinton groups American Bridge and Correct the Record.